Abbas was KGB agent, according to archive papers
Both leaders agreed to the meeting in principle but have yet to set a date.
Asked about Netanyahu’s video, State Department spokeswoman Elizabeth Trudeau cited broad global consensus that regards settlements as an “obstacle to peace”.
The last time Israel and Palestine talked about their problems in earnest was two and a half years ago, with the US Secretary of State, John Kerry as their mediator.
The timing of Moscow’s announcement must also be uncomfortable for Kerry, who was meeting Thursday with Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov in Geneva to try to forge peace in Syria.
Decades of US -mediated Middle East peace efforts have failed to bring lasting peace between the Israelis and the Palestinians. But given the hundreds of thousands of Jews now living in the West Bank, as well as the Palestinian leadership’s refusal to accept these residents, mutual land swaps have been proposed as a solution that would not require forced deportation from settlements.
A Palestinian official, who declined to be identified as he was not authorized to speak publicly on the matter, said that Abbas had served as an “official liaison with the Soviets, so he hardly needed to be a spy”, without elaborating. “Intensive contacts on this are ongoing”. “The relevant line unequivocally names the Palestinian Authority president as a full pledged agent, under the codename ‘Krotov” derived from the Russian word for Mole”.
Those efforts fizzled when the Palestinian leader demanded Israel halt settlement construction on occupied lands claimed by the Palestinians. “I have retrieved several original KGB documents from Moscow whose handwritten copies eventually turned up in the Mitrokhin Archive”.
In an interview, researcher Remez said he made a decision to release the information now because of the Russian diplomatic initiative.
Palestinian officials scoffed at the report of Abbas’s possible ties to the Soviet spy agency, calling it a brazen effort to undermine him at a time when he is struggling with dissent at home and seeking support overseas.
Benjamin Netanyahu said in a video posted on social media Friday that he has “always been perplexed” by claims that Israeli settlement building is “an obstacle to peace”. These were captured by Israel during the 1967 war.
If a Moscow meeting takes place, the chances for substantial progress would seem slim. “There’s a clear trend of attempting to damage Abu Mazen by various elements, including Israel”, Mohammed al-Madani, a member of the central committee of Abbas’s Fatah political party, told Israeli daily newspaper Haaretz.
Nickolay Mladenov, the U.N. special coordinator for the Middle East peace process, criticized Israel for going against the recommendations of the Mideast Quartet, the diplomatic group including the United Nations, the United States and others.